DAY 19
We were supposed to travel by bus to Lalibela but changed our mind and booked a flight for the next day. We have no electricity for most of the day and no internet... so we rest and process the pictures of the last few days ;)
DAY 20
Today, we're hoping over the mountains over to Lalibela. It's a 25min flight that would take us the whole day by road. It's graduation as we drive to the airport. They have a very Anglo-Saxon way of doing it too (with robes, etc...). From up there, the terrain looks drier than on the Gonder side. The airport in Lalibela is in the middle of nowhere (to be fair, the city itself is in the middle of nowhere); the city is lost in the mountain and it's the closest flat terrain they could find. On the bright side, the 30min gravel road ride gives us time to enjoy the scenery and pass by quite a few villages. Once settled in our hotel, we decide to go have a look by ourselves at the churches. We'll hire a guide tomorrow to get the gran tour and the explanations. Of course, quite a few guides offer their services as soon as we arrive. Here, there's no official price. Every guide tries to squeeze as much as possible out of the tourists. We play along with a few of them to get a sense of the price so we're better armed to negotiate tomorrow.
The whole idea of Lalibela was to build a new Jerusalem. It was too dangerous at that time to go to Jerusalem and so everywhere, you have referenced to the bible. The 1st church is the biggest one in the whole site. There are excavation marks everywhere including on the very uneven floor. I can't imagine how to plan the excavation of this. The church feels like a big cave though; It's not very refined and devoid of decorations. We get to the 2nd church through a small tunnel. Its much smaller but much richer in terms of decoration. It has both paintings and carvings all over the walls and pillars. In one of the possible exits, we spot a deep tunnel. We explore it and end up at a 3rd church (St Michael). It's also a the small side with only carving on the pillars. It connects to a man only church called Golgotha where the apostles are carved. Only 4 of them are visible and 2 are in decent shape. It snap a few picture for Mar of course so she can see what she missed. We then follow a narrow trench around the church and stumble upon the tomb of Adam... to be ushered out by the guard a few minutes after. Time was up and the site is closing. We randomly visited a few churches of the site but it looks very promising for tomorrow. There's not much else for us to do so we start heading back to our hotel. On the way, we meet a 17 years old guy who asks politely to practice his English with us. It's a nice change from the “faranji faranji” that we usually are gifted with. We go for a drink the 3 of us and spend a good while with that very nice kid.
(One of the many representation of St George killing the dragon)